Trajectory design for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) is of great importance to the oceanographic research community. Intelligent planning is required to maneuver a vehicle to high-valued locations for data collection. We consider the use of ocean model predictions to determine the locations to be visited by an AUV. While traversing the path connecting these locations, the vehicle collects data and provides near-real time, in situ measurements back to the model to increase the skill of future predictions. Our focus is on algorithms to determine relevant points of scientific interest for a vehicle to visit within a dynamically evolving oceanographic feature. This represents a first approach to an end to end autonomous prediction and tasking system for aquatic, mobile sensor networks. We design sampling missions and present simulated scenarios and results from field deployments for AUV feature tracking in the Southern California coastal ocean.
CINAPS, Path Planning, Glider, harmful algal bloom, ocean model
<span class="author">Ryan N. Smith, Yi Chao, Peggy P. Li, David A. Caron, Burton H. Jones and Gaurav S. Sukhatme</span>.
"<span class="title">Planning and Implementing Trajectories for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles to Track Evolving Ocean Processes based on Predictions from a Regional Ocean Model</span>".
<span class="journal">International Journal of Robotics Research</span>,
<span class="volume">26</span><span class="number">(12)</span>,
author = "Ryan N. Smith, Yi Chao, Peggy P. Li, David A. Caron, Burton H. Jones and Gaurav S. Sukhatme",
title = "Planning and Implementing Trajectories for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles to Track Evolving Ocean Processes based on Predictions from a Regional Ocean Model",
journal = "International Journal of Robotics Research",
volume = "26",
number = "12",
month = "Oct",
year = "2010",
url = "http://robotics.usc.edu/publications/646/"
Caron Lab, Department of Biological Sciences
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
Robotic Embedded Systems Laboratory
usCLAB, Department of Biological Sciences